Mauritius shake things up to attract more Chinese tourists

Mauritius tourism has been holding a series of promotional activities in China, especially to tap the immense potential Chinese tourism market has to offer in this growing field. Towards this end, Air-Mauritius started direct flights to major cities in China such as Shanghai, Beijing in the year 2013, this kicked off their aggressive marketing plan. What followed was a series of promotional activities that continued into the current year 2014, as well!

A massive road show with over 30 representatives from Mauritius, more than 140 tour operators in China and media participated in a highly successful road show recently in 2014. Mauritius has been seeing a positive result of these efforts with more than 40,000 registered Chinese travelling to their country last year.

China has immense potential to offer to the global tourism market. Chinese tourists are now the target of every country’s tourism boards, as they have travelled and spent extensively, than tourists from any other country in the year 2013, giving them the top slot in this category. Mauritius is trying to tap this immense potential of Chinese tourists.

Number of outbound Chinese tourists keeps growing

A report by COTRI, estimates about 106 million tourists; an increase of 17% over the last year, from Mainland China would be travelling to many destinations, with an estimated spending of US$ 129 billion. Backed by such figures Chinese tourism market is the target of every tourism board. Chinese have an inclination for island and beach destinations such as Bali, Maldives, and Hawaii.

The rapid economic development, growing wealth and prosperity, leading to urbanization at a fast pace, all have contributed to an increase in the disposable incomes. Along with these factors, the government’s policy to relax travel norms, austerity measures have all led to the increase in the number of Chinese travelling to various destinations in the world. For example the number of Chinese travelling to places like Hong Kong, and Macau has increased from 10 million in 2000 to 80 million last year. With such potential the Chinese tourist has been a subject of attention for Mauritius tourism board, as well!

Chinese tourists are priority number one for Mauritius

Mauritius considers tapping a part of this growing number of Chinese tourists important for the country’s economic development. As the European tourists, a great source of tourism revenue earlier has been receding due to the economic slowdown in Europe.

Mauritius, full of beautiful, exotic, calm, serene water bodies is confident of attracting the young, wealthy, hardworking, tech savvy young Chinese. Purchase manager Wang Ning, CYTS tours, China, supports this claim saying that the free visa policy is attracting many Chinese tourists to the exotic Mauritius locations. Gold, high-altitude jumping, deep sea finishing are among the favorite activities Chinese of tourists in Mauritius.

The many tour operators in China have been seeing an increase in the number of bookings for Mauritius destinations.

Conclusion

For Mauritius tourism industry players, it is a good idea to start their own marketing strategy in synergy with what has been initiated by Mauritius itself. In order to do that properly, as a tourism industry player you need to reach the Chinese tourists where they are. This means a full blown out online marketing campaign including the following steps :

Have a China-localised website translated in Chinese matching the Chinese netizens standards

Do SEO/SEM to improve your e-reputation

Community management on the main travel-specialised communities and Chinese social networks (Weibo, Wechat) since Chinese spend a third of their weekly 25 hours online connected there

Online PR to have experts talking about your company

Have well designed personalized multimedia content to send a clear and very appealing message